OHM- The Early Gurus of Electronic Music

Interview with Peter Namlookby Jason Gross(April 2000)

Q: Why is electronic music important outside
of its own genre? In other words, what is its larger cultural importance?

Every century has its own instruments and it is of great
significance that with the start of electricity around the turn of the
last century, some ingenious people in Russia, France and Germany invented
musical instruments that created a sound never heard before. This
influences not only music but as well other cultural genres and the average
people as the sound of the 20th century started to evolve. This sound is
the soundtrack to our times.

Q: How have some of the pioneers of electronic music had
an effect on your work?

At first not directly, but definitely indirectly through
listening to all kinds of music involving electronic instruments. Walter
Carlos Switched on Bach was the first recording of pure Electronic
Music that I listened to when I was 8 years old and I was fully amazed.
Later, when I was first introduced to the music of Oskar Sala I had the
impression that there is no way to make electronic music more organic and
that there is no possibility to transfer your ideas more direct than with
his instrument the "Trautonium" (In terms of sound *and* music). So I had
a guy rebuilding a Trautonium and wrote a computer-program that enabled
me to play subharmonic chords.